Privileged VILLENAGE, a species of tenure otherwise called villain-fee. See TENURE.
Ancient demesne consists of those lands or manors which, though now perhaps granted out to private subjects, were actually in the hands of the crown in the time of Edward the confessor, or William the conqueror; and so appear to have been by the great survey in the exchequer called domesday book. The tenants of these lands, under the crown, were not all of the same order or degree. Some of them, as Britton testifies, continued for a long time pure and absolute villains, dependent on the will of the lord: and common copyholders in only a few points. Others were in great measure enfranchised by the royal favour: being only bound in respect of their lands to perform some of the better sort of villain-services; but those determinate and certain; as, to plough the king's land for so many days, to supply his court with
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such a quantity of provisions, and the like; all of which are now changed into pecuniary rents: and in consideration hereof they had many immunities and privileges granted to them; as, to try the right of their property in a peculiar court of their own, called a court of ancient demesne, by a peculiar process denominated a writ of right close: not to pay toll or taxes; not to contribute to the expences of knights of the shire; not to be put on juries, and the like.
These tenants therefore, though their tenure be absolutely copyhold, yet have an interest equivalent to a freehold: for, though their services were of a base and villenous original, yet the tenants were esteemed in all other respects to be highly privileged villeins; and especially for that their services were fixed and determinate, and that they could not be compelled (like pure villeins) to relinquish those tenements at the lord's will, or to hold them against their own: et ideo, says Bracton, dicuntur liberi.
Lands holding by this tenure are therefore a species of copyhold, and as such preserved and exempted from the operation of the statute of Charles II. Yet they differ from common copyholds, principally in the privileges before-mentioned: as also they differ from freeholders by one especial mark and tincture of villenage, noted by Bracton, and remaining to this day; viz. that they cannot be conveyed from man to man by the general common law conveyances of feoffment, and the rest; but must pass by surrender to the lord or his steward, in the manner of common copyholds: yet with this difference, that, in the surrenders of these lands in ancient demesne, it is not used to say, "to hold at the will of the lord," in their copies; but only, "to hold according to the custom of the manor."
VILLI, among botanists, a kind of down like short hair, with which some trees abound.